It has been said of Haydn that ‘The full extent of his greatness is a time bomb yet to go off’. Certainly, on hearing the slow movement of Haydn’s 88th Symphony, Brahms remarked ‘I want my Ninth Symphony to sound like this’.

The First Horn Concerto by Richard Strauss is an early work, composed for his father and played this evening by the principal horn of the Meadows Chamber Orchestra, David Wilson.

Brahms is genuinely puzzling because he combines so many contradictions: “too romantic/a diehard classicist/a fusty traditionalist/a trailblazer for modernism”. Yet despite some darker moments, the second symphony remains one of the most loved in the symphonic repertoire.